CHAPTER XXVIII.

The shade of twilight was but just fleeting, a faint
glow waxed over the eastern hills, and the great orchard
of pear-trees that pressed up to one end of Melcombe
House showed white as an army of shrouded ghosts in
the dim solemnities of dawn. The house was closely
shut up, and no one met Valentine, as, tired after
a night journey, he dismissed a hired fly at the inn,
and came up slowly to those grand old silent trees.

Without sunshine, white in nature is always most solemn.
Here stillness was added; not a bird was yet awake,
not a leaf stirred. A faint bluish haze appeared
to confuse the outlines of the trees, but as he lingered
looking at them and at the house which he had now fully
decided to take for his home, Mr. Melcombe saw this
haze dissolve itself and retreat; there was light
enough to make the paleness whiter, and to show the
distinct brown trunk of each pear-tree, with the cushions
of green moss at its roots. Formless whiteness
and visible dusk had divided themselves into light
and shade, then came a shaft of sunshine, the boughs
laden with dewy blossom sparkled like snow, and in
one instant the oppression of their solemnity was
over, and they appeared to smile upon his approach
to his home.